A golden anniversary for the ZIP Code

Postman John Garcia was shouldering his mailbag through Arcadia half a century ago when he noticed five new numbers inscribed at the bottom of a letter: 91006.

Despite a nationwide advertising campaign leading to the launch of the ZIP code sorting system 50 years ago today, he didn't give the five digits for the San Gabriel Valley city a second thought. | PHOTOS:ZIP Code turns 50 -- it keeps the mail moving

"We just thought it was another scheme to give somebody work," recalled Garcia, 72, a United States Postal Service carrier in Arcadia since 1959. "But it turned out it made the nation's postal system work.

"I'm still amazed."

Launched on July 1, 1963, the mundane ZIP code on the tail of every address has guided letters and packages to every nook and lane in the nation.

The Zoning Improvement Plan not only streamlined a U.S. Post Office Department groaning beneath a mountain of mid-century mail. It also transformed the modern postal service, leading to the automatic sorting of hundreds of billions of letters and parcels now optically scanned and bar-coded to arrive at every home and business -- a task once exclusively performed by hand.

Moreover, the 42,000 geographically coded regions, cities, post offices and neighborhoods now serve as the DNA for the nation's 9-1-1 emergency system.

"It was a major step forward in our delivery system, and is still relevant today," said Richard Maher, spokesman for the USPS in Los Angeles and Orange County. "The ZIP code was the first step in the march toward automatic mail processing, which made us much more efficient, allowing us to deliver large volume of mail with fewer resources."

The postal service, having solved its sorting issues, suffered from a nearly $16 billion deficit last year. In addition to having to prepay nearly $6 billion in health and pension benefits, it must cope with a dramatic plunge in first-class mail as more Americans resort to online bill-paying and other communications.

Flashback to the early 1960s, however, at the height of the postwar business and Baby Boom. President John F. Kennedy basked in colorful Camelot. The Corvette Stingray reigned as road king. And across Southern California, the last orange groves were giving way to strip malls and sprawling subdivisions.

Post offices, meanwhile, suffered an avalanche of mostly business mail, from new mortgage bills to magazines. In two decades after World War II, the national volume of mail had doubled to 68 billion pieces.

But while the nation's postal trucks were the vanguard of mail delivery, hand sorting dated back to the days of Ben Franklin.

Enter the ZIP code, launched 50 years ago today by Postmaster General Edward Day after a year-long advertising blitz.

The promotion campaign, led by cartoon mailman Mr. ZIP, proved masterful in winning over the general public. As Americans learned to recall new telephone area codes, their new five-digit ZIP code would soon come to symbolize home. Some longtime residents recall it simply became a natural part of sending out letters.

"I thought it was a good idea "...I never gave it any thought at all," said Midge Sherwood, of San Marino, who has lived in Southern California long enough to recall interviewing Amelia Earhart for her college newspaper. "Still using it, so it's automatic."

The first ZIP digit would represent a region of the country, the next two a central post office facility and the last two a particular post office, with up to 10,000 points of delivery. Or very few.

Before long, postal clerks could type the numbers of the lowest ZIP code in the nation, 00501, toss a tax return on a conveyer, and it would be mechanically routed to a postal bin destined for the Internal Revenue Service office in Holtsville, NY. Type in the highest ZIP, 99950, and the letter would be routed to Ketchikan, Alaska. Or 20016 to the White House.

Not to forget 90210 in Beverly Hills, whose TV fame would make it the most famous ZIP code of all time.

In 1983, the U.S. Postal Service added ZIP+4, which targeted mail to a particular street, and was especially encouraged by business. A few years later, it grew to an 11-digit bar code to route mail to a particular house. By then, vast distribution plants were automatically scanning addresses and sorting mail down to the direct sequence of delivery on a postal route.

While a postal clerk could sort 600 letters an hour by hand, a bar-code sorter can race through 30,000, thanks to the ZIP code.

Nowhere was this more apparent than during a recent visit to the Mission City Annex in Mission Hills, where 120 clerks and carriers scurried to prepare mail for designated San Fernando Valley routes.

While it once took carriers a half a day to sort mail, it now takes just over an hour. So routes are denser, and sometimes longer, as the national volume of mail has plunged from 213 billion pieces at the nation's peak in 2006 to 160 billion pieces last year.

Its postmaster, a former hang-gliding trainer from Malibu, said he once took the simple ZIP for granted, until he discovered its magic-carpet moving power to such Valley ZIPs as 913 for Woodland Hills, Granada Hills and North Hills neighborhoods, 914 for Van Nuys, 915 for Burbank and 916 for North Hollywood.

"The first thing the (mail) carrier saw any effect of the ZIP code was when ZIP+4 came in -- and it had automatically sorted the mail," said Tom Ludovico, postmaster for the San Fernando region.

Ultimately, contemporary historians say ZIP codes played a key role in the development of modern communications.

"It's the foundation for processing and moving mail," said Nancy Pope, founding curator and historian for the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

"It's the bedrock for all mail processing that has happened since.

"The role it plays is so critical to our postal service, business and government structure, you can't subtract it without all the boxes tumbling down. It's critical to our daily lives."

*This article has been updated. A previous version said a postal clerk could sort 30 letters an hour by hand. The correct number is 600.